Red Dragon
by follsman
Summary: After the Buu Saga, an old enemy returns to destroy the Saiyajins of Chikyuu and take over the universe with the help of the Red Dragonballs. Just what are these Red Dragonballs? Who is this old enemy?
1. Default Chapter

PART 1: Monster

Cold, white hands gripped him, holding him immobile and helpless. Hot, rank breath on the back of his neck, the stink of charnel houses. Sibilant, whispering laughter mocking him, mocking his weakness—he who had always been so strong. Grief and blood rage choked him, erupting in a guttural howl, as he struggled at first to break free, and finally to deny what was happening to him.

Pain was nothing to his kind. From the cradle he had been taught to welcome it as sharp affirmation that he was alive. He had cut his teeth on violence and death.

But this…

There had never been anything like this, never in the world!

Denial was stripped away from him, rage was beaten down. In the end, there way only grief and stomach clenching shame and betrayal that this, this, was what his father had given him over to. Out of fear.

Out of weakness.

Dignity laid waste, pride gone, all sense of safety destroyed forever. The adoration and near-worship of his father shattered and already uncon-sciously souring into cold contempt.

"The wages of weakness, little prince," the voice chuckled in his ear.

A sob caught in his throat—the first tears he had ever shed—the last he would shed for nearly 20 years.

Black, talon-like nails sank into the bare flesh on his shoulders, piercing and tearing. "Don't cry, Vegita-chan," Lord Frieza purred. "I have a special place in my heart for children."

He jerked awake, bolting upright with a gasp, sweating and shaking.

Movement caught his eye and he summoned ki, raising his open hand—and stopped.

Wide eyes under a mop of blue bangs regarded him curiously. He relaxed slowly, lowered his hand. The child crawled onto the bed and into his lap.

"Bra?" His voice sounded hoarse even to his own ears. He'd come a hair's breath from killing her by accident. The absolute trust in the girl's sleepy smile as she looped her arms around his neck made something deep inside him constrict involuntarily.

"Poppa, you're squishing me," Bra said, squirming. He loosened his hold on her. He glanced at the bedside clock. 1:00am. "Bra, what are you doing up?"

"I heard you having a bad dream and it woke me up," she replied.

He frowned. At 3, his daughter's ki was disappointingly lower than her brother's had been at the same age, but her telepathic powers,unusually latent in both humans and Saiyans, seemed to be off the scale. The thought of Bra being subjected to the nightly horror show his dreams had become of late was not a pleasant one.

"Did you see my dream?" He asked carefully.

She shook her head. "No, I just felt you being hurt and afraid." One tiny hand patted his shoulder. "Poor Poppa."

He snorted. "It'll be poor Bra if your mother comes back from her party and finds you out of bed." He was feeling more normal with every passing second. "Did you break the nanny-bot thing again?"

"Not bad," Bra said evasively.

He carried her back down the hall to her bedroom, noting with a satisfied smirk the dozens of pieces of what had once been Bulma's nanny-bot project strewn about the room. The smiling nannyhead and core processor was imbedded into one wall at the center of a smoking, black burn mark that still sang with the memory of his daughter's ki.

It occurred to him suddenly that perhaps Bra was like Kakarott's first born, Gohan. The little bastard had shown only negligible ki at first. But when thrown into the mix of battle, when frightened or angered in any way, his power level had risen without precedent, seemingly with limit. Did that same potential sleep dormant inside his youngest child?

He sat her down on her bed. "Get into bed, Brat," he said quietly.

"I'm not a brat," she said, crawling under the covers, one arm curled around a stuffed dinosaur. "I'm a princess."

"That you are," he agreed, his face stony and expressionless. She smiled up at him, seeing effortlessly past the stoic warrior's mask. He pulled the quilt up around her more securely. He wasn't sure why; the room was perfectly warm.

Let your power sleep, he said silently. I would not awaken it with fear and death and danger for all the wealth in creation. I will commend to Hell's mercy anyone who tries.

"I had a bad dream last week," she murmured drowsily. She was almost asleep. "I dreamed about a monster."

"So did I," he whispered.

In his room, he washed his face and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the bathroom mirror. He would not sleep again tonight.He was averaging less an hour a night, now. He needed 4-3 at the very least.

Why now? he wondered. After 6, maybe 7 years of relatively peaceful sleep, why had these old, rotting corpses from his first life come back to haunt him? He closed his eyes tiredly, remembering….

Strong hands lifted him from the floor where he lay naked in a pool of blood, vomit and filth. There were voices around him, faint and indistinct. Dodoria's booming laugh cut through the dim buzz, chuckling about his "initiation." In his half-conscious state, he didn't remember when he was bathed, bandaged, and clothed. He did remember growling and lunging at the hand that slapped him back to full wakefulness. A big hand caught his small fist effortlessly.

"Easy, little soldier," Zarbon said.

Memory came flooding back and his snarl tapered down into a wounded animal's moan.

"How old are you?" The blue-skinned warrior asked. The man slapped his face again, pulling him back as reality began to slide away again.

"Nine standard years," he whispered.

"It is Lord Frieza's common practice to break all the young ones who come unwillingly into his service," Zarbon told him conversationally.

The man's lack of pity or mockery was an unlooked-for mercy. "Your body will heal, but your heart and mind will never forget who is the Master and who is the slave."

"I am no one's slave!" He rapped out.

Zarbon sighed. "Listen to me, little prince of Vegita-sei. I am not your friend. If my master lifts one finger, I will gut you without a moments hesitation. But I will give you some advice. Nothing amuses my master so much as defiance. And the harder you defy him, the worse he will use you—until he has broken your spirit or broken your mind. If you continue to howl and rage at him, you will always be his favorite catamite." The blue warrior's lips twitched in a mirthless smile. "I was younger than you when he bought me from the slavers who destroyed my homeworld. Listen to the voice of experience, boy. Keep silent, obey, and grow strong. That is how you will survive."

"Grow strong," he repeated softly.

"Zarbon?" He met the man's eyes for the first time. "I am hostage, according to treaty. Held in trust against my father's fealty to Lord Frieza…If I…" He swallowed, tasting bile. "If I obey and grow strong, my father and my people will be safe as well, yes?" Zarbon's face was unreadable. He nodded solomly. "That's the deal, boy."

It was 4 years before they told about the "meteor storm" that had destroyed his father and his world.

Grow strong, his mind whispered as his body shuddered with the shame and sick, helpless rage of the child he had been. Grow strong…

Those two words had shaped the man the child would become, had driven him beyond reason, beyond sanity, beyond any excepted definition of the word obsession. They had driven him to his own death not once, but twice.

"Why now?" He said aloud.

You have never had so much to lose as you do now, a voice whispered in the deepest recesses of his mind.

Grow strong…

Heh.

The only living being in the universe more powerful than himself was a blithering idiot who would no more harm those he held dear than…than he could carry on an intelligent conversation.

He shook himself irritably and stilled the involuntary trembling. He was the mightiest warrior in this or any other world…

Well…the mightiest with a full set of wits, anyway. And that was only for the moment, dammit! There had to be another level beyond SSJ3, and when he achieved it first, he would give Kakarott the beating of his miserable life!

He was strong enough to protect all that he had built; this good life he had built in spite of himself. He raised his head and gazed into the mirror-and cried out, his voice cracking like an adolescent's.

Frieza gazed back at him out of the mirror, his blood-hued lips curled into a saccharine smile. The voice, so full of sweet, insinuating malice…He knew that voice so well! This was no dream! No hallucination!

A wave of black energy rushed over his senses, so violent it bowled him over physically.

"Soon, Vegita-chan," the old monster chuckled softly in his head. "Soon…"

With a hoarse cry, he smashed the mirror and launched himself out the window.

The annual Capsule Corp profit share Gala was showing no sign of winding down. Research and Development had taken the lion's share of the bonus's this year and the entire department was rip-roaring drunk. Petr Smoliensk, the head of Moscow R&D, was leading a bunny hop line of nearly fifty people across the middle of the dance floor. Bonnie of CapCorp West's L.A. offices was nearly in tears, watching the end of her one woman crusade to "streamline Capsule Corp's maverick, unconversional image to more exemplify a world corporate power."

Bulma Briefs snickered. "No company built on the shoulders of scientists and inventors should ever try to be chic and trendy," she said aloud. Her father, venerable creator and owner of Cap Corp, was near the head of the bunny line.

"Are you sure I look all right?" Chi-chi self-consciously pulled down on the hem of the dress Bulma had lent her for the occasion.

"I feel indecent."

Bulma smiled sunnily. "Modern fashion, Chi-chi." She was not completely plastered herself, but she was definitely tipsy. It had been a hectic, exhausting month. In two days, the planet's first line of non-military spaceships would be available of the open market, courtesy of Capsule Corp. Every government on Earth had fought them tooth and nail every inch of the way. "You're wearing a bra and your ass is covered," she hiccuped. "You're decent."

The look of veiled disapproval on the other woman's face brought her up short. She and Chi-chi had never been very close—they were as different as two women could be in most ways. They were bound together by mutual love for Son-kun and the close friendship of their sons, but Bulma never lost sight of the other woman's disapproval of her and her family. She changed the subject.

"So, are you going into private practice, or are you still deciding?"

"I'm not sure," Chi-chi said frowning. "Clinical psychology seemed very appealing when Gokou-saa was…gone. I finished the degree because it was something I had started. But…I think the happier you are, the less interesting other people's problems become. And I don't take Gokou-saa's presence for granted. I'm jealous of every moment we spend apart, because some part of me believes that our days together are numbered."

Bulma stared at her. She hadn't expected the other woman to pour out her own heart in answer to such a casual question. Chi-chi's gaze had turned across the room to where her husband and her oldest son were wreaking devastation upon the food bar, engrossed in conversation with one another between mouthfuls. Gohan's wife Videl had taken their new baby to visit her mother in Europe for a few weeks. Gohan, unable to leave university during mid-semester, had moved in with his parents until Videl's return. "They could almost be brothers," Bulma murmured. Son-kun had not aged since the day he had shown up at Kame House with a 5 year old Gohan in tow.

"How long do Saiyans live, I wonder," Chi-chi said, echoing her thoughts.

"I made the mistake of asking Vegita that once," Bulma said wryly. "He said, 'Until we're killed.'"

They locked gazes, sharing unvoiced, unspoken thoughts. And burst out laughing.

A streak of lavender caught Bulma's peripheral mother's vision, and her hand snaked out and grabbed an ear. "Trunks, where are you going with that jar?"

Her son looked at her, all innocence. "Nowhere."

"We're gonna wait til people start to pass out, and stick big gobs of peanut butter in their ears!" Goten said brightly. At 12, he was already a head taller than his mother, but he yelped sharply when Chi-chi's hand clamped firmly down on his own ear.

As Chi-chi dragged Goten away, reprimanding loudly, Trunks smiled sheepishly and handed over the peanut butter jar. "Sorry, Kassan."

Bulma sighed. "Kassan's very tired and plans to sleep for a week after this party's over, Trunks. Kassan's also ever-so-slightly drunk." The boy snickered. "I'll think up some appropriately hideous and boring chore for your punishment after that."

"'Kay."

"I need one man in this family I can have at company functions who won't inflict physical damage on my guests. Okay?"

Trunks laughed outright. He seemed to have grown another inch while she wasn't looking. Sweet Kami, was he really almost 13 years old?

"Okay, Kassan." He looked sorrowfully at Goten. Chi-chi still hadn't released his ear. "I got him in trouble again."

"Yes, you did," she kissed him on the cheek. "He'll live. Be good. I've got to check on some things upstairs. And possibly throw up."

The room tilted pleasantly as she rode the elevator up to her suite in the office tower. Checking her laptop vidphone on her cluttered desk, she found no new messages. Good. No last minute hitches. She sank down into her chair and toyed with the bits of her last unofficial invention lying beside the vidphone like disgaurded jewelry. She twirled the two shiny metallic rings around her wrists like tine hoola-hoops, before encapsulating them and shoving them into her dress pocket. What should she call it? Transport? Telemat? Matterporter? Hmm. Better to think of a name when she was completely sober.

She really should go over to the family wings of the compound and check on Bra. She was starting to think that market testing the Nanny-Bot proto-type on her daughter was a huge mistake. She had not spent enough time with her youngest child—with any of her family, for that matter—in the last few weeks, and Bra was voicing her displeasure in a very Saiyan fashion. Bulma wondered with a faint chill if the toddler would have torn the arms off of a human baby-sitter the way she'd done the Nanny-bot.

She smiled in spite of herself.

She had known her children would have some measure of inherent violent behavior—known it from the word go. She pulled the scarflette—one of a collection she'd taken to wearing habitually over the years—from her neck. Her fingers lightly touched a fading mark on her throat. The first time she had noticed such a mark on Bulma's throat, her mother her had told her something in her airy, slightly unfocused way, which Bulma had never forgotten. If you lie down with wild things, Dear, expect to get bitten. She spun her chair around to look down from the office tower's sparkling view of the city below, lost in memory. Vegita had definitely been a wild thing the first time he had come to her. Rough was not an adequate word to describe their first encounter.

After weeks of her taunting, teasing sexual overtures, her had silently followed her back to her quarter of the compound. He had taken her without ceremony, without preamble, without a word. He turned her away from him with a low growl, bent her forward over the foot of her own bed, and brutally thrust into her. He pounded her nearly senseless for over an hour; she came four times, the last time screaming. She had pursued him looking for something hard core and rough and, by Kami, he had given it to her in spades. Afterwards, bruised, aching and bleeding, she turned and gently pushed him down on the bed while he was still shuddering in he wake of his own release. Her heart was still hammering in her chest with kinky excitement and the very real danger of this vicious, half-mad animal she had taken to her bed. This half-mad animal she meant to tame.

"Lie back and let me do the work this time," she whispered. "Let me show you another way."

"Don't tell me what to do, bitch," he rasped. Then she took him in her mouth and his snarl turned to a gasp. She teased and stroked him with gentle tongue and teeth and fingers, drawing out the sweet torture, reveling in the way he arched his back and bit back a cry when he came in her mouth. He was ready again almost instantly, and she straddled him, pulling him up into a sitting position. She eased him into her sore body with maddening slowness. His eyes, almost invisible pools of black in the dark room, bored into her, and for the first time, she thought she saw something unguarded in their depths. She moved slowly on him, touching every part of his body, always gently, always following the touch of her hand with her lips. She built him up, increasing her speed with agonizing slowness, and when they both crested together, he cried out like a man who'd just received a mortal wound, crushing her to him. She was wrapped around him just as tightly, shaken by a dawning realization that what she had played at this evening was no longer a game—should never have been a game with him.

He still held her in a vise-like embrace, as though he thought she might be snatched from his arms at any moment. Years later, many years later, he would tell her in a horribly toneless voice about the first girl, the only other girl he had been with. She had been a year older than him, the daughter of one of the camp followers, mercenary whores who grew rich off of Frieza's legions. Adolescent experementation had led to sex almost accidentally. Dodoria, the bloated orange sadist, Frieza's second lieutenant, had indeed snatched the girl from the 14-year-old Vegita's arms and torn her into two pieces before his eyes.

But now his fingers traveled over the crimson, crescent-shaped wounds on her shoulders where his finger nails had gouged into her during their first time. The dull look of shock that flickered briefly behind his eyes told her he hadn't even been aware he had been doing it.

Her hand traced the almost identical set of scars of his shoulders. There was more than one set, marring the otherwise perfect, inhumanly smooth skin. She would have many years to ponder the meaning of those faded marks. They were old, but they were very, very deep. She touched her lips to his softly, then kissed his face. He frowned at her in confusion.

"It doesn't have to hurt," she said softly. " It can be just pleasure."

"Woman, you…" His voice was unsteady. He stoked her cheek with one finger. "Woman, you talk too much," he said finally. Then he pulled her down and lay her beside him as though she were made of glass.

Wrapping his arms around her, gently this time, he had fallen asleep with the quick ease of a long time soldier who slept when he could.She lay for a long time gazing at his face, shaken to the bone by the unexpected emotion welling up inside of her. What the hell, she wondered, had she just gotten herself into?

A long, rocky road to happiness, she thought, gazing at the city lights without really seeing them. A year of being his lover, wordlessly working compromises between his violent ferocity and her gentle skill, before he would speak more than a few words to her as they lay together in the darkness afterwards. Years before he would show her anything other than scorn and contempt in the light of day, unable to fathom that the men he had killed when he first came to Chikyuu—Piccalo and Tien in particular—would not kill her and Trunks if they knew he gave a damn about them. Unable to admit even to himself, that he did give a damn about them. Years more, until the Buu holocaust had stripped away all he had unwillingly come to cherish, leaving theman he had been shattered in a thousand subtle ways in its wake.

She would like to think she had rebuilt him this time. But she knew that the man she now shared her life with was his own creation—perhaps for he first time in his life. Not of his father's making, nor Frieza's, not even hers.

Vegita was not normal. He was not nice or sociable or friendly or remotely easy to get along with. But she knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that her loved her and their children more than his own life, though he never said the words. He was-

She bit back a shrill shriek.

-He was right behind her.

"Vegita, you son of a bitch! You scared—"

"Do you trust me?" He said harshly.

"Yes," she said without hesitation. She took in his appearance. He was dressed only in the black cotton gi pants he wore for sleep, his face pale and drawn. His eyes were black pinpoints; they looked desperate. No, she amended. They looked terrified. "What—"

He cut her off. "Trunks and Goten are watching Bra. They're waiting in the Crane prototype in your mother's garden. Let's go!" He pulled her Toward the window.

"Where are we going?" She half-shouted in exasperation.

"We're leaving."

"Leaving the house?"

"Leaving this godless planet, woman!" He saw the look on her face and took a deep breath. Taking her face between his hands, he kissed her mouth softly. "Listen to me. A moment ago, I felt a surge of something.It was not ki. It was like the rush of power when Shen Long is summoned. Only greater. A power level so high I could not take the measure of it. And it was familiar. Come!" Before she could protest, he scooped her up and bulleted out the window, landing in the rose garden beside the Crane 1000, the first prototype of Cap Corp's new starship line. He sat her on her feet, and checked the launch sequence timer on the forward landing strut. He cursed impatiently. "She still needs 5 more minutes to power up for launch. Get on board!"

"Vegita!" Gokou, with Gohan at his side, was striding across the grass toward them, all traces of the half-bright man-child she had known since her youth thrown off like well worn suit. Bulma felt a wave of dread rush over her. This was the man Son-kun might have been, the man Gokou would only force himself to become when things were at their most perilous. The sight of her old friend in full possession of his wits scared her more than the real fear in her husband's face.

"I know!" Vegita said. "I felt it too."

"You're running away?" Gokou said in honest amazement. The lack of recrimination in his voice seemed to infuriate Vegita more. "Vegita, Chikyuu needs—"

"Fuck Chikyuu," Vegita said succinctly. "Fuck everyone on it, and fuck you too, Kakarott." Gokou blinked. "I'm taking my family off this mudball. If you are capable of remembering that far back, you'll recall that they didn't exactly survive Chikyuu's last catastrophe intact!" He stopped, reigning himself in with great effort. "I'm taking Bulma and Bra some place safe. I know a dozen out of the way planets to hide them on. Trunks and I will be back to fight. We've got three minutes before the ship's ready. Grab that screeching harpy you're mated to, Kakarott, and we'll take her with us as well."

"You're right, Vegita." Gokou smiled grimly and nodded. "He has no honor. He might come after our families to get at us. Don't worry, though. We won't defeat him until you get back!"

"Defeat who!" Bulma almost screamed.

"Frieza," Vegita said after a brief silence. "Somehow he's found a way out of Hell."

"But…he should be nothing to you now. Any one of you could take him out almost instantly." Bulma looked at the bleak faces of the three Saiyans. "…couldn't you?

Gohan spoke up. "The old Frieza, yes. But something's changed. His energy…it's beyond imagining. It's…"

"Infinite," Vegita finished.

The world spun crazily and went black.

"Wake up, Bulma! Wake up, we need you!" Someone was slapping her face hard enough to sting. Bulma opened her eyes to see Chi-Chi hovering over her anxiously. Somewhere close by, there was a low, rolling boom, followed closely by another. The ground beneath her shook violently with each detonation.

"What happened?" She asked shakily.

"It's Vegita," Chi-Chi said hurriedly.

Nearby, above the smoking crater where her mother's cherry orchard had been, three small suns were revolving crazily in the air, illuminating the night around them.

"Power down!" Gokou's voice came from the center of the inferno. "Dammit, Vegita! Power down! We'll shake the planet apart if we keep this up much longer.!"

In the eye of the firey maelstrom, Gokou and Gohan seemed to be barely restraining Vegita, who whirled and thrashed madly. All three were powered up beyond first level Super Saiyan and the world was indeed shuddering under the strain each time Vegita lashed out and the other two Saiyans countered.

"You don't realized what's happened!" Vegita screamed hoarsely. "You don't—" There was another deafening boom. Bulma heard a musical tinkling as every window in the compound, perhaps in the city, shattered.

"Vegita-san!" Gohan's voice. "Bulma-san's less than 30 meters away! You're putting her in danger! Power down!" The young man's calm measured voice, so much older than his years, seemed to penetrate Vegita's unthinking rage where Gokou's had only inflamed it. The deadly golden light around the three men faded as they slowly levitated to the ground. Vegita stood motionless between the two Sons, who watched him warily. He looked like he was holding the madness that had gripped him a moment before by a thin frayed thread. Then his eyes found hers. He held her gaze for one brief second, then look away and sagged to his knees as though he'd been dealt some debilitating blow. Bulma fought down rising panic.

What, oh sweet Kami, What had just happened?

She stared at Chi-Chi's tear-streaked face, and Gokou, Gohan, and Vegita, all grim and terrible as untimely death. Then she saw it.

The Crane 1000 showpiece Vegita had been prepping for launch was gone. Gone…

"The kids," she whispered. "Frieza's taken them." 


	2. The hunt

ISCLAIMER: I don't own DBZ or any of its characters.

WARNING: Sex, harsh language, adult situations, blah-dee-blah Blah-blah.

PART 2: The Hunt

"The kids," Bulma whispered. "Frieza's taken them."

Chi-Chi sounded choked. "My little Goten as well."

Gokou patted her awkwardly. "We'll get them back, Chi-Chi," He said. "They can't have gotten far."

Bulma turned to Vegita. He stood beside her still and motionless as granite, his face blank and cold. Hold it together, girl, she told herself, because he's very close to losing it completely.

"I have the Crane commercial passenger prototype decapsulated in in hanger three," she said steadily. "It's bigger and faster than anything I've ever built."

All the mens' heads snapped up in unison. "Piccalo-san!" Gohan said. only Gokou didn't look surprised.

"I've got some news about our old pal Frieza's recent visit." The Namek's telepathic voice echoed deep inside her head, making Bulma flinch with surprise. From the look on Chi-Chi's face she was hearing him also. "It's bad," he said bluntly. "Some of this you'll have already figured out. Somewhere, somehow, some galaxy class intellect thought it would be a plan to wish Frieza back to life."

"Did they use the Namekian dragon balls?" Gokou asked.

"I wish," Piccalo growled. "We think these dragon balls were made by a Namek named Daruma. He was a wanderer like me, but he would have been ancient by the time I was born. And when I say I, I mean Kami and myself, before we split. Which means he remembers craft secrets that were lost eons ago. So, forget all the rules for any set of dragon balls you've ever dealt with. He wrote his own rules for the Red Dragon Balls and we still don't know what they are. He was also a real bastard. So was the dragon he conjured. Anything you wish for with these babys will turn to evil. Red Soraku decides how to fulfill the wish and he'll find a way to twist it against you."

Gohan frowned. "You mean like if you wish to be rich, for instance, someone you love would die and you'd collect a fortune in insurance?"

Piccalo's dry mental chuckle. "That sounds about right, kid."

"Sound like this Soraku has a nasty sense of humor," Gokou said.

"Dende's sources think Frieza was wished back by the last remnants of his own people, the Tsiru-jin."

Vegita cursed visciously. "I knew I hadn't gotten them all!" Everyone stared. "After Namek was destroyed, before Kakarott returned to Chikyuu, I paid a visit to Planet Frieza where the old lizard quartered most of his legions and a great many of his own folk. I did not leave so much as an insect alive, but I knew there were other Tsiru-jin out there. I should have hunted them down! They're royal house is deity in their eyes. I should have known they would do something to try and resurrect him!" Bulma put a comforting hand on his arm, and he jerked away from her touch angrily. She swallowed hard, beating the tears down ruthlessly. In half an hour, her seemed to have regressed ten years.

"How did he get so strong?" She asked, tearing her eyes away from her husband.

"Daruma's dragon balls come with five wishes," Piccalo replied. "We think his people used the first one to wish him back. Then he used the second one to wish for power—anything he wished for would be turn to evil, but I guess because he's evil himelf, the dragon didn't screw him. He wished for the power of a god, people. If we could quantify how strong he is now, it'd be something on the order of Super Saiyan 7 now, if there were such a thing. And the third wish to wish all his armies back."

"There's no time limit on how long the people you wish back with these dragon balls can have been dead?" Gohan sounded startled.

"You got it, kid. This new Frieza's not the same pasty little bastard we all knew and loved. He has the almost limitless power of a Kai now, but is subject to none of the celestial laws that bar the Kais from excessive interferance in the physical plain. And he still has one more wish under his belt." Piccalo paused. Bulma had the sense that he was receiving information from a third party. "Okay, listen up people. Dende's tied up right now in a fifty-way conference call. We've got a rogue Kai and an evil dragon on our hands, and this is one of the few exception where the gods get to throw down and personally take action."

"The gods are going to war," Chi-Chi murmured.

"Not if we can help it," Piccalo said. "Dende and I are both of the opinion that there may not be very much left in the aftermath of such a battle." A pause. "I've got to go, soon. The hotheads are starting to gang up on Dende. "Gokou, Vegita—Daruma is the key. He's the only one who knows how the Red Dragon Balls work and Frieza's last wish and their power will be directly tied to his life. Dende won't tell you this but I will. No Daruma, no dragon balls, no more wishes. It won't solve all our problems, but it'll pull a couple of his teeth. And it might keep the Kais out of this if Red Soraku's out of the picture."

"Daruma dies only after he's told us all the secrets of his dragon balls," Vegita nodded, his eyes burning.

Gokou shook his head. "I know what you're saying Piccalo, but I won't do it. Tracking down Daruma and killing him is still murder."

"Fine by me," Vegita snapped.

"You two can argue about it on the way," Chi-Chi said sharply. "The first priority is getting our children back safely!"

Something had been tickling the back of Bulma's mind. Something That didn't quite add up. "What happened to the forth wish?" She asked. everyone's eyes turned to her. "The Tsiru-jin used the first one to wish Frieza back and Frieza used the second to wish for strength and the third to wish back all his soldiers. And Piccalo said he still has one more wish. So, what happened to the forth wish?"

There was a long silence. Piccalo finally spoke again. "That's the final thing I have to tell you. He took your kids and left you all alive for revenge. Because he wanted to hurt Gokou and Vegita, and leave them alive for a while to go on hurting."

"Get on with it!" Vegita said harshly.

"He planned this out very carefully, I think. You know you'll be walking into a trap."

"We still have to go,"Gokou replied. "I don't believe in traps, anyway. There's always a way to win. We just have to find it."

Piccolo was silent a moment longer. "Then I need to prepare you for what you'll find. The blackout you all experienced was the forth wish. It was the result of a temporal shift. Frieza used his wish to take this entire solar system and everything in it outside of the temporal plane and set it down in another point in time. Frieza hasn't had your kids for fifteen minutes or even fifteen hours. He's had them for fifteen years."

The two Saiyan warriors stood side by side watching the small, blue-green planet they called home slowly recede from sight. From the galley just the Crane passenger ship's elaborate bridge, the soft burr of conversation between Chi-Chi and Gohan drifted toward them.

"…couldn't catch them in, to tell Videl what's going on," Gohan murmurred.

"…know she'd understand…" Chi-Chi's subdued voice.

"Chi-Chi's cooking something special," Gokou said after a long silence. "She says it's one of her 'coping mechanisms'."

Vegita grunted. Behind them at the navigation console, Bulma's presence on the edges of his consciousness was a bright spark of pain. She had won her fight to come with them, beating down his angry refusals with stony logic. Her technical genius might give them a needed edge at some vital moment. That and the fact that nowhere in the galaxy would she be safe from Frieza, now. The others had watched the argument escalate, waiting for the explosion that never came. In the end, he had simply turned his back on her coldly and said in an icy, disinterested voice, "Do whatever you want,Woman." He wrenched his thoughts away from the memory of the hurt in her face. He backed away from it. He could feel his mind methodically shutting down his emotions one by one, going cold. A part of him was relieved. There was no comfort in the numbness, but at least he could function. Maybe that was his 'coping mechanism.'

"I've found her," Bulma said quietly. A year ago, Bulma had planted a microscopic tracking device in one of Bra's first molars (Saiyan children never lost there milk teeth.) She had done this in a fit of frustration and worry after losing the highly mobile baby in the enormous Capsule compound for the third time in one day. "A bit of tweaking," Bulma had said, was all that was needed to trace the girl half-way across the galaxy. "I made a couple of course corrections over the last hour so I could cross-reference the readouts from the tracer," she said. She glanced up at Gokou blank face. "Bra's right here," she pointed to the X on the nav computer's star chart.

Vegita checked the coordinates. "Mardran," he murmurred.

"Do you know it?" Bulma did not look up from the read out.

"I've been there," he said shortly. "Low population, but very rich. The Madrani design, manufacture and broker weapons."

"They don't sound very nice," Kakarott said.

"They did their work and kept to themselves," Vegita replied. "That's all I know about them."

"I've laid in the course," Bulma said. "We should be there in 12 hours. I'm going to try to get some rest." She stood and left the bridge without a backward look.

"Supper should almost be ready. Are you hungry?" Kakarott's voice sounded so normal and calm Vegita fought the urge to strike him.

"No."

The big idiot eyed him doubtfully as the concept were utterly alien to him. "Vegita, you'll need to keep your strenth up for this fight. Frieza will have some pretty nasty tricks up his sleeve, if I know him."

"You don't know a damn thing about Frieza, Kakarott!" Vegita rasped. "You never did!"

"I know everything you know." Vegita's head snapped around. Kakarott met his eyes guilelessly. "From when we fused, remember? You had all my thoughts and I had all of yours. You told me afterwards that you thought you might have nightmares about Chi-Chi for the rest of your life, and I said I didn't blame you because Chi-Chi can be really scary sometimes when she gets angry—"

"I was talking about your wedding night, you brainless, lowclass imbecile!" Kakarott frowned slightly, but regaurded him without anger. "If you know everything…" He turned away from the other Saiyan, his whole body trembling with conflicting rushes of emotion.

"I remember when you first came to Chikyuu," Kararott went on. "You seemed to really enjoy being evil, but when my mind touched yours a couple of time while we were fighting, it was like…" He paused, searching for words that were beyond his vocabulary. "….Like you'd swallowed a bunch of razors and they were cutting you to pieces on the inside. I know it'll be bad, Vegita, but maybe not as bad as you think. They're not alone, like you were. They have each other and the memory of our love. You can survive almost anything if you have love."

"Kakarott, Bra was three years old," he began. He choked the words off and the anger rose up, burning down the pain as it always seemed to. He rounded on the bigger Saiyan, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. "How can you stand there so calmly, Kakarott! Blithering about love and togetherness when your child has been in the hands of a monster for fifteen years! When you know—" He stopped, shaking the fool until his teeth rattled. "Where is your anger, Kakarott? Where is your hate!"

Kakorott laid a hand on his own heart.. His brows drew down and together. "In here," he tapped his chest gently. His voice, that irritating adolescent-sounding alto, had dropped a full octave. "I'm saving it all for Frieza," Kakarott told him in a deathly quiet voice. Vegita stared into the bigger man's eyes, chilled. For an instant, something burning and terrible had flickered there. "I've never felt hate before, Vegita." Kakarott told him. "It hurts."

"Gokou-sa!" Chi-Chi's voice came faintly from the galley. Kakarott seemed to shake himself, though he didn't move. He gazed at Vegita politely until the Saiyan prince realized he was still gripping the other man's arms tightly. He let go and stepped back.

"Cooking for me makes Chi-Chi feel better when she's upset," Kakarott said in his normal voice. "That must be what "coping mechanism" means." He looked inordinately pleased that he had puzzled this out. "Are you sure you're not hungry, Vegita?"

Vegita shook his head mutely. It never failed to stun him, how the man could change like that. Kakarott was already moving away, being pulled irresistibly by his stomach. "Chi-Chi always gives me a hug after she's yelled at me," he said almost absently as he walked away. "After that, everything's all right again. It's nice to have someone to love, isn't it, Vegita?"

Vegita opened the door to their cabin and undressed quietly in the dark. He moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Bulma lay turned away from him, tears drying on her face. She wasn't asleep. He reached down and turned her gently, pulling her up into his arms. One finger traced the faint streaks her tears had made, brushing them away.

"I need you, Vegita," she whispered. "Please don't shut me out."

He pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her softly. He hadn't known what a kiss was until she'd taught him. She returned the embrace, hesitantly at first, then with growing intensity. His hands found their way under the white cotton top she wore, touching soft skin. She shrugged out of her underwear and he pulled the tank over her head. Wrapping both arms and legs around him, she pulled him down onto her with surprising strength. "I need you, Vegita," she said again.

He had meant to take a long time, to make love to her slowly and gently, the way she liked it. But the feverish, almost desperate look on her face changed his mind. He threaded each of his hands through hers and thrust fully into her in one smooth motion. She gasped and bowed her back, shuddering as he filled her up completely, banishing thought and pain for both of them, if only for now. He moved inside her, hard and fast, giving her what she demanded, exhausting release and the deep, irrefutable reassurance of his presence throughout every inch of her. Something seemed to break fatally inside him at the end. The old comfortable wall he'd been resurrecting around himself, that he'd never demolished completely, shattered into a million sharp fragments. Feeling came rushing back over him in a crushing wave and all that he had shut down and shut out rose up and struck him with the force of a hammer, leaving him naked and defenseless in her arms.

Bulma lay quietly spent beneath him, her heart already slowing. One hand gently disengaged his and caressed the back of his neck. His head was resting in the soft hollow between her neck and shoulder. He made no move to draw away, simply lay silent and still above and within her. He didn't seem to be breathing until she felt a faint tremor run through his body, and he took a short sharp hitch of breath. She swallowed the sob that rose in her throat when she felt the wetness on her shoulder where his face lay buried. She said nothing. There were no words of comfort that would not shame him, and none that were sufficient. So, she held him silently in the darkness. They held each other against the grief the next twenty-four hours might bring. Sleep never came, but whatever horrors or battles lay before them, neither of them would face it alone.


	3. Part 3 Madran

DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN DBZ OR ANY CHARACTER OF THE SAME. I'M NOT RECEIVING ANY MONEY FROM THE WRITING OF THIS PIECE OF FAN FICTION.

WARNING: ALL YE UNDER 18 GO AWAY NOW! This fic contains extreme violence, adult themes and profanity. If this is not your thing, don't read it.

PART III: MADRAN

The ship set down in the charred blasted remains of what had once been Madran's capital city.

"My goodness!" Chi-Chi exclaimed, surveying the wreckage around them. Gohan hung anxiously close to his mother, scanning the burned-out buildings for danger. Vegita snorted. The boy's strength would be an asset in this suicide rescue mission of theirs, but his fear for the fool woman's safety might paralyze him at some critical moment.

Bulma adjusted the tracer and turned due east. Her strained, tired face looked hopeful. "She's less than 10 kilometers from here, somewhere in these ruins."

"I wondered what happened here?" Gohan muttered. "Whatever is was it was recent."

"Who gives a damn!" Vegita demanded. "Let's go get her!" He scooped Bulma up, tracer and all, and shot upward. The others followed suit, all flying low to the ground. The signal grew steadily stronger as they neared the center of the city. Bulma recalibrated one more time.

"There," she pointed the instrument directly at the husk of what had once been a temple or maybe a school. It was more intact than any of the other structures around it. Vegita sat her on her feet in the arched doorway. He ripped the melted slag of the door off its hinges and stepped inside first.

It had been a temple. Young and old, entire families, had crammed inside hoping for some divine protection from the attack they must have known was coming. It hadn't saved them. A huge circular section of the roof was caved in and shafts of bright sunshine illuminated what lay around them all too well. Everyone who had not taken refuge below ground when the blast hit had been roasted alive. Bulma drew in a sharp breath. Then she set her jaw firmly and began picking her way through the still smoking remains.

Kakarott, looming behind him in the doorway, glanced back and caught his son's eye. The younger Son said something in a hushed voice to his mother, blocking her view of what lay past the temple door.

The tracer's signal had risen to a shrill shriek as it closed in on its target. Bulma knelt down and Vegita watched, frozen, as she pulled a white, crimson-tipped tooth out of the ashes. He caught her just before she sagged to the floor. She made no sound, only beat against his chest with one clenched fist as he held her against him. When she did finally make some sort of noise, it was an angry, full-throated howl of rage. Vegita closed his eyes, and the image came to him, unbidden, of Bra lying safe and snug in her bed, smiling up at him.

I dreamed about a monster, Poppa.

A shadow fell across his face.

"Sounds like someone strangling a cat," a rough voice snickered. Ringed around the edge of the hole in the ceiling, a dozen hulking silhouettes peered down at them.

Vegita uttered an incoherent roar and hurled himself up at them. He was beyond all thought, beyond all reason, beyond recognizing the too-familiar armor worn by all of Frieza'a soldiers. There was nothing but the mindless, burning need to kill. He didn't bother with ki blasts, he simply began pounding and slashing with his bare hands. His hand seared through a living chest, seizing the fluttering heart within, smashing it to pulp. He whirled and gripped another enemy's head, ripping it off and hurling it like a missile through the stomach of a third. Somewhere on the ground, Kakarott and his son were beating down another knot of warriors with short, controlled bursts, firing with just enough power to stun, not kill. Good, Vegita thought, All the more for me! He spun wildly in the air, rending and pummeling everything in sight. All sense of time ceased to exist, until he realized, through the red din of the killing rage, that he was alone. They were all dead. With a cheated snarl, he dove toward the clump of figures on the ground. Kakarott and his brat were hunched over one last survivor, and Bulma and Chi-Chi were approaching the scene of the fight hesitantly. Vegita landed hard and stared into the prisoner's battered face.

"Zarbon," he rasped. He raised one finger, and a tiny witchlight of energy pooled on the tip. "I will thank Frieza before I kill him, for giving me the chance to kill you twice."

"Vegita-san, wait!" Gohan cried. "He may know how to find Goten and Trunks!"

"Oh, he will tell us where they are," Vegita agreed softly. He released the dot of ki, searing the flesh on Zarbon's left foot below the ankle. He was rewarded with a hoarse scream.

"Vegita, listen to me!" Zarbon hissed through clenched teeth.

"Stop it, Vegita!" Kakarott stepped between him and the blue-skinned warrior. "He wasn't with Frieza's men. I think he was their prisoner."

"I know what he is," Vegita said balefully. "Get out of my way, Kakarott!"

Something hard slammed into him from behind, bowling him over. He righted himself, seeing Kakarott and Gohan picking themselves up off the ground as well. Beside him now, Bulma gasped, and he followed her gaze to the armored figure who now stood between them and Zarbon. He stared frozen in shock at the young woman whose face was very nearly a mirror of Bulma's, surrounded in the glow of her own Super Saiyan aura.

"Don't you touch my father, you son of a bitch!" Bra said.

-

Vegita stared into the angry blue eyes of his youngest child, and the madness that infused him moments before seemed to drain out of him. The look he leveled at Zarbon was still murderous, but he seemed to have regained control. Bulma suppressed a shudder. No matter what the circumstances, It was terrifying to watch Vegita kill so ruthlessly.

She laid a gentle hand on his arm and stepped between him and Bra. "No one's going to hurt Zarbon, Bra. I promise I won't let them." She kept her voice even with effort. She eyed the energy cuffs that bound the blue-skinned man's hands and feet together. "I can take those off of him." She reached slowly toward the tool belt around her waist. "I've also got a medical kit. Someone should see to his wounds."

Bra eyed her with open suspicion.

"You can trust her, love," Zarbon told the girl quietly.

Bulma moved past her daughter, who was still powered up, blocking the men's access to her "father". She knelt beside the injured warrior, and after a quick examination, popped the cuffs with a negative pulse wrench. "You," she told him as she set about treating the burn on His foot, "Need to start explaining yourself right now."

The flawless, beautiful face that had made her blush like a school girl so many years ago, smiled ruefully up at her. "I suppose so.Where to begin? Bra-chan?" His voice softened noticeably. "Come sit down beside me and this pretty lady."

Bra backed up cautiously and knelt beside him, never taking her eyes off Vegita. "He hurt you, Father," she said.

Vegita cursed viscously at the girl's use of the word "father".

"Vegita, stop it," Bulma said quietly. Her eyes never left Zarbon's. "I think we may have a great deal to thank him for. You rescued her, didn't you? Why?"

Zarbon stared at her in surprise. Then he sighed. "I'd already made up my mind to bolt before they ever took the kids. One lifetime in Frieza's service was enough for me. When they brought the children on board Frieza's cruiser, the boys nearly tore the ship apart. They almost got away three or four times during the first few hours. By the time we put in at the hub space port on Skilda, the ship was in pandemonium. Everything was on fire or being blown apart, Frieza was laughing his ass off watching the boys kill his own men, like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. My Madrani contact had just signaled me it was now or never if I was going to jump ship. And in the midst of this unbelievable shit storm, I looked down and saw Bra. No one was paying any attention to her in all the chaos. She looked up at me and raised her arms for me to pick her up, and I just…I just grabbed her and ran." He glanced at Bra. "I still don't really know why. She's been nothing but a pain in the ass from day one." Bra made a face at him. "Put it down to a gesture to childhood. I was a child in Frieza's court, just like Vegita." He and Vegita exchanged an unreadable look and Vegita nodded grimly in silent thanks to the other man. "Anyway," Zarbon went on, "while Frieza began gobbling up system after system of free worlds, we managed to hook up with a kind of underground. The Madrani were part of the network. They had developed a mechanism that allows us to hide in from our enemies in plain sight. Bra and I set down a couple of hours ago and found this. We split up to look for the Mastertech, sort of the planet's head scientist. I found him and his team, or what was left of them. Someone had spent a lot of time getting info out them."

"Do you think it was the SPE specs they were after?" Bra asked anxiously.

"I hope not, love. Whoever tortured the Mastertech to death got what they wanted and left. The ones who jumped us were just Frieza's standard clean up crew. None of them were powerful enough to fry a huge city like this in seconds." He smiled without any humor. "You can all come back to Haven, our base world , with as. I think we might be able to help each other. But if Frieza has the plans to our camouflage engine, we may all simply die together." He scanned their faces. "Now that I've answered a couple of your questions, maybe you wouldn't mind answering one for me. What the hell are the lot of you still doing alive? I thought Frieza had atomized you and Chikyuu's entire system a few seconds after the Ginyu returned from their little kidnapping expedition."

""You're from Chikyuu?" Bra sounded startled. "That was my home planet! Father's right, Frieza blew it up 15 years ago…" She broke off, staring at Bulma.

"No," her mother shook her head. "Frieza used one of his wishes to diplace the entire solar system temporally. Your 15 years ago was yesterday to us."

"I know you, don't I?" Bra said in a small voice.

"Oh baby," Bulma reached out and tried to embrace the girl, but Bra drew back in confusion.

Vegita turned away from the dull look of hurt on his wife's face, to Zarbon. "Tell her," he said coldly.

Zarbon took Bra's hand and pulled her gently back toward Bulma. "Look at her, Bra. You were right. You do know her." Bra gazed intently at her mother, and one hand crept up the older woman's face hesitantly as she processed all the information she had received in the last few minutes.

"Ka-kassan…" the girl asked, trembling. "Mama…You're my Mama!"

"Baby," Bulma took the sobbing girl in her arms. "Oh, Bra-chan, shhh."

"I remember," Bra told her. "I was afraid you'd be mad at me when you got back from your party, because I murdered Nanny-Bot!" Bulma burst out laughing through tears. "I remember that night…" Bra repeated. She trailed off again, her eyes finding Vegita. "Poppa."

Vegita knelt beside her, and regarded his daughter. His features shifted minutely, softening into a look he only ever directed at his wife and daughter. Her left cheek was swollen and bruised. He touched it lightly with one gloved finger.

"One of them got in a lucky swing," she told him. "I think I lost a couple of teeth."

Vegita chuckled. "At least one. It's how we were tracking you." The girl looked confused, but he didn't bother to explain. He frowned at the blast-scored, dented, much-used armor she wore. "I would not have taught you to fight unless you wished it."

"Nessecity wished it," Zarbon interjected. He stood shakily. "We need to have this family reunion elsewhere. "Is the ship still cloaked?" He asked Bra.

"They blew it to pieces," Bra said.

"We have a ship," Bulma said firmly. "We can take you to your resistance base."

Zarbon laughed, shaking his head. "I 'd like to think we were a resistance, but mostly it's about hiding as many people and worlds as quickly as we can."

In spite of herself, Bulma was very nearly salivating with scientific curiosity. "Hiding whole worlds! How—"

"Later," Vegita said. "Let's get back to the ship and out of this system first."

Bulma laid in the coordinates Zarbon had give her, watching her daughter anxiously hover over the blue warrior's wounds. Vegita stood a little removed from everyone else, but she sensed the conflicting emotions inside him roiling just beneath the surface. Thankfulness that the man had saved Bra from Frieza and the dull glower of hatred that he had taught her to call him "father". There was some other tension between the two men as well. She had the sense that it was in some way related to the years they had spent in Frieza's service, the part of his past Vegita never spoke of. It occurred to her that, in some ways, Zarbon knew more about her husband than she did herself.

Finally, Chi-Chi voiced the question they had all been thinking.

"What about the boys? What do you know about my Goten and Trunks?"

Bra stiffened and Zarbon's face went carefully blank. Bulma tried to steel herself for the worst. "When they were first brought on board," Zarbon said slowly, "Frieza told them that you had all used Chikyuu's dragon balls to wish yourselves and Chikyuu to safety. That their parents had abandoned them because their lives weren't worth the lives of everyone on Chikyuu." The silence from the earth Saiyans was deathly still and cold. "I thought it was a load of green Namek shit myself, something he told the boys to demoralized them, and that he'd actually blow you all to the far side of Hell. But a kid might believe it-like a kid might believe a "meteor storm" had destroyed his homeworld by ill chance." Vegita looked sick.

Gohan finally spoke. "What kind of mind would make up a story like that?"

"Frieza's," Vegita hissed.

"Are they alive?" Gokou asked softly. Chi-Chi glanced at him and then away quickly. There was enough anger in that calm question to crack worlds in half, to snuff out suns like a flame blown out at a candle's wick

"They are Frieza's destroyers," Zarbon said finally. "His two-headed angel of death. We've met them only once, when our last base world was discovered 3 years ago. They led the attack—no one was spared. We survived because, at the last second, Trunks recognized Bra. He sort of froze for a moment."

"I'd like to think nissan let us go," Bra said. "But it may have just been surprise that made him hesitate—just long enough for me to knock him cold."

"We only know what little we've seen and what we've heard from other survivors of conquered worlds," Zarbon continued. "Goten fights like a machine, he's completely controlled and merciless in battle and cold and rational off the field. Trunks…The day our base on Arbatsu fell, he was gentle and kind to one set of captives, then tore them limb from limb a few moments later for no discernible reason. He was erratic and unpredictable and horribly, horribly powerful. And his own men feared him. Goten was the only one who seemed to be able to get through to him or bridle him in any way. Trunks is…"

"Nissan is mad." Bra said flatly. "Whether is was Frieza's doing or thinking he'd been left to his fate by all of you, Trunks is completely crazy."

-

The young man approached the glimmering white throne and knelt in calm obeisance. The spikes of his short-cropped, jet black hair were smoking slightly from the warning blast that had just sung past his left ear. The Tsiru-jin courtiers and guards circled like piranha, hissing with outrage that the warrior had come unannounced and unsummoned into their master's presence. A pale hand motioned minutely, staying his execution, and they went still.

For all the reaction the dark warrior showed, he might have been praying alone in some tranquil temple grove. A metallic eye-patch covered the blasted socket where his left eye had been and the red lens of his scouter covered the right, making it difficult to discern his expression. His deceptively light, youthful voice was calm and measured.

"I live to serve you, Lord."

The White Hall within the royal palace of Tsiru-sei was a pristine sculpture of exquisite beauty, wrought in ivory, ice, and the intricately carved bones of ancient enemies. Every whisper of a sound carried and echoed in the hollow emptiness around him. A soft snicker reached his ears, a bare wisp of sound. He raised his head slowly, his breath hanging ghostlike in the frozen air. His gaze was respectfully lowered, not meeting the eyes of the creature who sat on the ice throne.

"A world to burn? A rack to turn?" The one-eyed warrior sing-songed. One corner of his mouth curled up impishly. "I've a song or two I'll wager you've not heard, Lord. An off-color love ballad involving a Tsiru-jin and a fire demon?"

A breath of a chuckle drifted toward him. "What would you call such a ditty, boy? 'Roasted Love'? 'Frozen Passions'?"

The kneeling man casually removed his scouter and raised his head a little further. The boyish beauty of his features was strangely accented by the angry scar and eye-patch. "'The Melted Heart', Lord."

The sighing voice of his master seemed intrigued. "Do you hope to melt my heart, child? I know you have come to beg for your friend's life."

"He will be needed if the Kais move against us, Lord." He thought he saw a flicker of fear on the alabaster face before him. Steeling himself for what might be his last action this side of hell, he reached out and ran one finger coaxingly down the three-pronged foot. Behind him, the Tsiru-jin courtiers hummed in jealous fury at such audacity.

"Give me Trunks to safe guard, Lord Frieza. He only becomes…unmanageable when we are separated. I will pledge my life on his good behavior." He smiled into the monster's face, his own face automatically taking on its most appealing expression. "What can I do to sway your heart, Lord?"

One bone white hand stroked his thick black hair as though her were a much-loved, favorite dog. "Sing that foolish song for me, Goten-chan."

-

Time had begun to have some meaning again. He hung suspended on the western spire of the Tsiru-sei palace, icicles and frost on his long hair and numb wind-burned face. The sun was going down. The nights on Tsiru-sei dropped to 80 below in the summers. He would not survive the night, and was somehow able to summon up a bit of pleasure at the thought. An end to pain. Even the nothingness of separation of body and spirit that Hell offered seemed inviting He closed his eyes, ready to surrender consciousness as he hadn't since he was a small child. A harsh sob and a spike of familiar ki jerked him back to awareness. A "snick", and the ki-dampening slave collar Frieza used on the most powerful of his prisoners was pulled off.

"Oh, Trunks-kun," Goten's hands were gently tugging at the steel spikes they had pounded through his wrists at dawn.

"Leave it, Goten," he tried to say. He couldn't move his mouth. Goten seemed to hear the thought anyway, because he was growling in angry refusal.

"No way," Goten said. "You're not allowed to die on me, Trunks. Do you hear me, you crazy son of a bitch? You're not allowed!"

Goten wrapped one hand around each of the spikes they'd used to crucify him to the tower spire and tore them out in one movement. Trunks had time to draw in one sharp gulp of air before the pain rose up and turned the world black.

He awoke to burning pain and an odd, soothing warmth. Goten's face blurred slowly into view.

"I've packed you down in med patches. The frosty bitch wouldn't let me use the regen tank. He said he wants the scars to help you 'reflect on your sins'. Just don't try to move yet."

"My sins…" Trunks chest caught in a hitch. Goten had been told what had happened. Frieza had ordered a seventy- percent casualty rate on the world Trunks had taken two days ago. The indigenous population were reported to be intelligent and highly malleable, and Frieza had meant the remaining thirty- percent to be used as technical support slaves. Trunks had not left so much as a microbe alive on the planet's surface.

"I started thinking about how their lives as slaves would be worse than a good clean death," Trunks told him. "Then I guess I just stopped thinking all together. I started killing and I couldn't stop. I couldn't stop!"

"So you lost your shit in the heat of battle," Goten said uncomfortably. "It happens."

"They are better off aren't they, Goten?" Trunks voice had begun to take on a vague, disconnected, almost childlike tone that was becoming more and more frequent of late. It was somehow more frightening to Goten than any of his friend's insane bouts of rage

"Oh, Kami, Goten," Trunks sobs had tapered down into jagged breaths. "Do you think our parents can see us in Heaven?"

Goten looked away. "I hope not."

"They'd be so ashamed…I dreamed last night that they were all alive, Goten. That Frieza told the truth when he told us they were in hiding. I dreamed they finally decided to come rescue us." Trunks laughed unevenly. "What do you think they'd make of us now?"

"They wouldn't make anything of us, because they're all dead!" Goten said harshly. "Don't talk nonsense,Trunks."

"You went to him and asked him for my life, didn't you?" Trunks murmured.

Goten shrugged, inwardly relieved at the change of subject. The grey fog behind Trunks eyes seemed to recede for the moment. "Ask, beg, cajole—a bit of groveling here, a bit of judicious flirting there. He was in a good mood."

Trunks closed his eyes. He could imagine what the price of his life had been. "Oh, Goten-kun…"

Goten shrugged again as though it were nothing. "He was…Well, he was a she."

"What?"

"His time is almost on him." Goten said. "He's completely into his female cycle—and I mean to the point where someone ought to tell him to put on a bra!" Trunks uttered a weak cackle. "Can you imagine waking up one morning to find you're slowly turning into a girl? Creepy, ne?"

"The Tsiru-jin change gender to female when they are bearing their young," Trunks murmured. "It's natural for them. I would rather have died than see you go to him, Nissan."

"And I would rather have died than see you dead," Goten said flatly. "Anyway, it was no big deal. He was feeling all hormonal and motherly. All I did was sing for him and make him laugh." He didn't meet the other man's eyes, knowing his friend saw through the lie. "The Tsiru-jin Empire should have a bouncing baby heir—or eel , or whatever—any day now. It's my fault you got into deep shit anyway. I shouldn't have left you to do that job by yourself."

"Where did you go?" Trunks voice was slightly slurred. The trank in the med patches was finally kicking in.

"I followed that rumor we heard to Madran and had a talk with the Mastertech," Goten replied. "I've found Daruma, Trunks!"

"Where!" Trunks tried to rise weakly and Goten pushed him gently back down.

"Sleep, Trunks-kun," Goten said fiercely. "Rest and grow well. All of this long nightmare is almost over." He pushed the long lavender hair out of the other man's closed eyes. The one living thing in the universe he still loved. "I swear to you, Onissan," he told Trunks sleeping form,"Frieza will not live to see his firstborn draw breath!"


End file.
